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CTP (S3EAugSpecial3) Sacred Comedy: Gershon Siegel's Biblical Reboot

• Joseph M. Lenard | Christian Activist & Author in Politics

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CTP (S3EAugSpecial3) Sacred Comedy: Gershon Siegel's Biblical Reboot
Exploring more of the world of fascinating Guests, Health, Human Nature, Music / Movies, Mysterious, Politics, Social Issues, and much more 
Gershon Siegel discusses his book "Ten Commandments Reboot," offering a fresh, humorous take on divine governance and the origin story behind the biblical commandments. Through lighthearted storytelling, he addresses serious questions about morality, biblical interpretation, and our obligations to one another.
• Reimagining the Ten Commandments as originally fifteen divine suggestions that Moses edited down
• Using humor to make spiritual truths more accessible to both believers and skeptics
• Exploring the difference between murder and justifiable killing in biblical context
• Discussing how Jesus provided new context rather than erasing previous teachings
• Highlighting our moral obligations to serve others rather than just focusing on self-improvement
• Examining how humor can bypass defenses and open minds to reconsidering spiritual principles
• Recognizing that repetition of truth in different ways helps people absorb important messages


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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Constitutionalist Politics Podcast, aka CTP. I am your host, joseph M Leonard, and that's L-E-N-A-R-D. Ctp is your no-must, no-fuss, just-me-you-can-occasional-guest-type podcast. Really appreciate you tuning in. As Graham Norton will say, let's get on with the show. Hello everybody, hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Crustitutionalist Politics Podcast. Joining me today is Dare Sean, and I'm sensitive to names, you know, because my last name looks French. It's not, it's actually Polish somehow Leonard Owoskiewiczki or something. Leonard without an O. It got shortened too. So Gershon, though G-E-R-S-H-O-N. Siegel, am I getting the last name right at least? Okay, great, and you were joking about your own name, what?

Speaker 2:

Well, gershon, people take Gershon and they go Gershon or Gershon, and I tell them my people were peasants and they couldn't afford an accent, so it's just plain Gershon, yep, and you are the author of, and they couldn't afford an accent, so it's just plain direction.

Speaker 1:

Yep, and you are the author of Ten Commandments Reboot. So obviously I saw that and said, oh, I got to hear about this. Hey, there it is For the benefit of those viewing the behind-the-scenes video. He's holding up the book. But if you're on audio, why aren't you watching the video? You missed it, yeah you missed it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I don't know Good to be here, Good to be here, jason, good, good, I mean, I do get it. Most people listen to a podcast when they're out and about, but I don't get why people from their homes don't then want to watch the video rather than just listen. But you know, it's the same with Savage Unfiltered. I'm on and I talk to so many other podcasts filtered I'm on and I talk to so many other podcasts. They've got video channels but they don't get any views because people are just so used to only listening. But I like to put up behind the scenes video because you know, I want them to see you, I want them to see us interacting as long as we're talking about names, do I call you Joe?

Speaker 2:

I want them to see us interacting.

Speaker 1:

Well, as long as we're talking about names, do I call you Joe or Joseph Joseph, please? Yeah, joseph M Leonard, because there is a Joseph Lennard out of South Carolina who's also an author an author, so I try to be, you know, joseph M Leonard, because that's what my books are written under, to make sure people understand. But, at any rate, what before we get to the book? Who are you, where were you born and raised, and all that good stuff and all that good stuff.

Speaker 2:

Well, before I do that, I just want to say I'm really very touched by the fact that you've written these books. You've written your own books, and two of them are very practical how to publish a book, which is wonderful for authors, and how to do a podcast, and what a great gift that you've given. So I'm I'm, thank you for doing that and I do plan on getting that, that, that podcast, because that's kind of an interesting cool. Yeah, I'm and I'm I've. Only this is only the third or fourth podcast I've been on, so I'm a newbie. I'm 76 years old. The technology has gotten so far away from me, I'm overwhelmed with it. So thank you for trying to make that.

Speaker 1:

My how to write a book and get it published hints and Techniques is also written more like a novel than a self-help guide, because a lot of people aren't interested in maybe authoring their own book, but they should be curious about how does a book doesn't just get a wave of a magic wand and come into existence. Somebody's got to think it up. How does that happen? How do you write it? How do you publish it? How do you market it? All that stuff needed to be out there, because there's a million how to put your book on Amazon. Well, whoop-de-doo, I could read the Amazon help files for free for that.

Speaker 2:

Right, right.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you for having me oh a great honor to have you and what inspired the idea of Ten Commandments Reboot.

Speaker 2:

Well, it seems to me that the ten commandments have sort of been uh, you know, thrown kick to the curb. Here we have these 10 short little sentences that have been the undergirding of Western civilization, and yet they're not really being observed. And so I thought, if I put them in a different context, made a story up about how they came to be, what God in heaven had in mind. Because, let's face it, we're in all kinds of crises, and part of those crises are moral crises. Maybe the moral crisis is really the telling thing here, and so I wanted to re-inject that into humanity. We've lost touch with divine governance. You know, we were given some original instructions and we seem to be ignoring them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah and like it.

Speaker 2:

So I thought, if I do it in a human way. Yeah, and like it or not, if I do it in a humorous way yeah go on, Go ahead. If I do it in a humorous way, you know, first of all I kind of made Moses the villain.

Speaker 1:

Oh, interesting.

Speaker 2:

Oh interesting as to why heaven, why humanity has gone so far off the rails and why we're in this place now where we're staring into an abyss and what's going to happen. So I thought, well, okay, let's first of all commandments. Who likes to be commanded? I don't like to be commanded, I want to. You tell me. You tell me hey, do this, I'm going to want. Well, why? Why do I have to do that?

Speaker 2:

So this apology is basically trying to explain what heaven really had in mind originally, why they picked the Hebrews to receive this message, even though and I'll tell you something the Hebrews were not God's first choice. He wanted to go with the Babylonians. Babylonians already had a big empire and they were going to get the word out much quicker. But there was sort of a democracy going on in heaven and they had a conclave of the archangels and some of the archangels wanted the Hebrews and some of them wanted the Philistines, and on and on. But actually God went behind everybody's back and tried to enlist the Babylonians, but that didn't work out. So they ended up going with the Hebrews and, as we know, the Hebrews sold their cousins into slavery. So the story goes in the Bible and so this was a chance. Rather than flood the earth again like in the time of Noah and start all over again, they thought, well, let's just get a group of people together and they ended up being the Hebrews. We'll give them some codes and they'll be an example for the rest of humanity, and that way we won't have to wipe out the world and drown everybody like so many rats.

Speaker 2:

Well, they had to get somebody to deliver the message. They find Moses. Moses is the perfect candidate to do it. Only, moses is kind of now. He's kind of an arrogant guy. He knows the Egyptian mysteries and you're not going to bamboozle him like you did with Abraham. So Moses wants to be the most famous person that ever lived and he wants final editorial decisions on these suggestions from heaven. Well, god was not very good at negotiation. He wanted Moses to do it. So he lets Moses be the final editor. Because, first of all, there were not just 10. There were 15 original suggestions from heaven and each one was about a thousand words long. They obviously weren't going to fit on a little tiny stone tablet. But this is what they got and Moses eliminated five of the original suggestions and also said I'm not going to call them suggestions. I'm going to call them commandments. The Israelites need to be told what to do. They've been slaves for seven generations and they just need some straight out. This is how you do it, so that was Moses' insistence.

Speaker 1:

And Mel Brooks in the History of the World or whatever movie does a great tongue-in-cheek. I have your 15 commandments and drops one. I have your 10.

Speaker 2:

So we, as Christians, we got to keep a sense of humor. I'm so glad you're saying that and that is actually mentioned. I do reference no Brooks in the book.

Speaker 1:

And the other thing is like it or not, even non-Judeo-Christian formed nations based most of our laws on the Judeo-Christian ethos Bible. I talk about Penn and Teller all the time. He's an avowed atheist, but he too says he has no problem with Moses and the Ten Commandments being on our SCOTUS building Because, indeed, whether they're suggestions, commandments or just a non-believer looking at them, saying, yeah, you don't get to kill me, I don't get to kill you, you don't get to take my stuff, I don't get to take your stuff, these are good being a good human kind of things. So atheists shouldn't have a problem with it. A lot of them just hate Christianity and have a problem because they are laid out in the Bible.

Speaker 2:

Right, right, yeah, this book is not anti-religious at all, it's not anti-God, it's not anti-Jewish, right, it's not anti-Christian.

Speaker 1:

It's sounding a little tongue-in-cheek, but still serious and I like that because I say on this show all the time we Christians have to have a doggone sense of humor.

Speaker 2:

We do. We do, indeed, as a matter of fact, I have up on my wall it's a saying that it wasn't a Christian who said it, it was a Zen Buddhist monk, or something he says. In general life, one should laugh, and when one is not laughing, one should be waiting for the next laugh.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and if we can't laugh at ourselves, we got no business laughing at anybody else.

Speaker 2:

Well, yeah, we should start laughing at ourselves first, before we laugh at other people.

Speaker 1:

You're laughing at other people and you're walking a dangerous line there. Now I want to get your. Take the original Aramaic, hebrew, latin Greek of the commandment really is thou shalt not murder innocents, because Exodus 22.2 alone says a thief breaks in the night dealt a fatal blow. You are not guilty of murder. The intent matters. Killing is different than murder. The intent matters. Killing is different than murder.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a slippery slope when you're going to have an excuse to kill somebody, and we can create all kinds of scenarios. Well, this guy attacked my wife or my child.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's revenge and retribution, and that's a whole other thing. But Genesis, leviticus and whatever the death penalty is biblical. It is that you're not supposed to seek the revenge and kill the person. We are supposed to have fair and honest judicial system, but thou who sheddeth man blood by man shall have his blood sheddeth. The death penalty is biblical Again. That is then someone is killing that person, but it is not guilty of murdering an innocent.

Speaker 2:

Well, I don't want to be the executioner of that. That much I can tell you.

Speaker 1:

Well, I understand and I get that too, but again, yeah, as you said, we don't want to make.

Speaker 1:

We don't want to make Right, we don't want to make Excuse uh-oh, having Connectivity issues again, like I did an hour ago with another Recording. But yeah, we don't want to make excuses Uh-oh, having connectivity issues again, like I did an hour ago with another recording. But yeah, we don't want to make excuses that okay. Well, you can kill as long as you claim such and such. I'm not saying that right, some is forgivable. It's still a bad thing and to be avoided. But there are right. Self-defense is forgivable.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there probably are circumstances where you know self-defense may be one of those times. Certainly there's a righteous martial arts. People have learned how to defend themselves, you know, I think that's an important thing to do, and I also think you mentioned about a judicial decision. Rather than taking that on yourself, I'm certainly very much in favor of justice. Justice needs to be, you know, but everybody has to have that sense of justice, carry that sense of justice within themselves and treat each other fairly, with justice, with respect. You know, we, we had the most wonderful example in Jesus coming and saying turn the other cheek. Example in Jesus coming and saying turn the other cheek. Love your neighbor, love your enemy, love your enemies.

Speaker 1:

But he didn't say and the Bible doesn't say I erase I for an I entirely. It doesn't say be a continual sucker. It doesn't say continually turn the other cheek to the point of allowing yourself to be abused. It doesn't say that Context of the whole Bible matters.

Speaker 2:

Context is supremely important and you, Joseph, don't look like somebody who is going to be taken advantage of. I'm not going to worry about you being abused. You don't look like the kind of person that would take much abuse.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, what is it? Matthew 5, 17,. I did not come to erase—paraphrasing—I didn't come to erase the Scriptures, I came to fulfill them. He's not removing all the Old Testament. The New Testament provides new context and the new way, the preferred way. But again, yeah, don't always be a sucker. You can't just allow yourself to be a sucker all the time. Jesus certainly never said that.

Speaker 2:

No, he didn't. He didn't say that. And he did go into the temple and overthrew the money changers because he saw corruption, there was corruption, and when he saw corruption, he called people on it. And he wasn't there to erase all the previous laws, but in a way he supplanted all the previous laws by just saying love. You know, love is the supreme law.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

If everybody was coming from a place of loving everybody, we wouldn't need any other laws, basically, yeah yeah, and ultimately back to what you said about justice, we are not to be judge, jury and executioner all in one. And Matthew 7 is condemn not lest ye be condemned. Because there are other scriptures that tell us indeed to judge biblically, ourselves equally as well as others, but final judgment is for the Lord. So again, there's all that necessary context that people want to warp Matthew 7 and use just the first seven words judge not lest ye be judged. Leave out the whole rest of that scripture that talks about removing the log from thine own eye and, indeed, judging biblically.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I'm a believer in injustice, certainly, and and I'm also a believer in temperance and self-esteem. So I don't want I'm not going to walk on anybody and I don't want anybody walking on me using, using me for a doormat and we believe in grace and second chances.

Speaker 1:

Right, we're all human, we're all frail, we're all flawed, we're all imperfect. Everyone has and may in the future again have a bad day. First impression may not always be the correct one, right? So we have to give grace and that's part of the whole. Turn the other cheek, well, okay, and believe in reform and redemption.

Speaker 1:

I love you brother, Okay, yeah, Well, I quickly took us away from the humor, didn't I? I went to the fire and brimstone, but it's like you said, though overturning the tables. Matthew 23, fake Christians want just the kumbaya singing around the campire Jesus and ignore all that tough love stuff.

Speaker 2:

Right right.

Speaker 1:

Again all—.

Speaker 2:

That's why I did—that's why the book is written in a humorous way, because there's tough love in it. I tell people I am of the Mary Poppins school of spirituality. Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.

Speaker 1:

That's very good, very good.

Speaker 2:

You have to give a little bit of, you have to be a little entertaining, you have to be a little lighthearted. But there are harsh truths, some of them being we have obligations. People think you're born and you're in a privileged place. And we are in a privileged place and we have a debt to pay. And people think it's a free ride here, taking up space and eating the resources, consuming the resources. We need to make sure that we are enabling other people, empowering other people, like you did with your books. Wonderful thing. We all need to be in that place where we're trying to help others. There's so many self-help books out there. There's so many paths to self-perfection. I can make myself into a conscious, happy person, but if somebody's not benefiting from all the work that I've done on myself, then all that work that I've done on myself is for nothing. We're here to serve each other. That's my belief anyway.

Speaker 1:

No, amen Again. That's biblical, that's in there, that's right. Love our brothers, be our brother's keeper. We're not, though, however, ordered by force to do that. The Bible also makes the distinction between the unable versus the unwilling, who you have no obligation to, and I'm glad you mentioned humor again, because an atheist is not going to read my two Christitutionalist politics books. Going to read my two constitutionalist politics books, it's too serious for them. Your book, however, it might be attractive enough because it comes at it in a way that allows them to read it without feeling they're necessarily being preached to right Anything like in my what color is the sky really?

Speaker 1:

Episode, I use that scientific A farce. The sky isn't blue. I hate to break it to people who are used to parroting that because that's the accepted norm. No, at night is it blue? No, the sky is transparent. It appears blue, sometimes orange, sometimes green, based on atmospheric conditions and refraction and reflection of light off our planet. On Mars the sky would appear red because of the reflection, right, but yet we all say what color is the sky? Blue, no, wrong. And if you can reach people somewhat tongue-in-cheek, like I do, through that to get them to recognize, oh wait, a minute, you're right, I didn't really think that through. Then maybe they'll wake up to the fact well, what else hadn't I thought through? But again, anything through humor gets past some people's facade and defenses.

Speaker 2:

Right, right and yeah, humor is just well. We would be in sad shape, wouldn't we, if we couldn't laugh, if we didn't have humor. I mean, even the kings of old, they had their gestures, they knew that that was an essential element. So I'm kind of a modern day.

Speaker 1:

And, of course, those who hate Christianity accuse us all of having no sense of humor. We're always all uptight and preachy all the time, and that, of course, is not true. Proof in the pudding is this show.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, glad to see that you're such a jocular rock. I was a little nervous, frankly.

Speaker 1:

Oh, were you? Yeah, well, it's a very serious title and yeah, I trademarked constitutionalist because left, right, liberal, conservative, all those put people immediately on connotative defense. Right, they have in their mind oh liberal, you must be this, oh, conservative. So I invented Christitutionalist. You're either a Christian or you're not. You either understand the context of the Bible or you don't. And unfortunately there are a lot of Matthew 23s again. Just want the hippie version of Jesus and ignore all the commandments kind of parts, the tough love. They don't want to be bothered with that. Okay.

Speaker 2:

So you got any other questions for me? I got a question for you sure are you gonna read my book?

Speaker 1:

you know what? I'm not sure I you know I'm not gonna blow smoke or take oh, absolutely I, because we're not supposed to lie either. So I'm not going to string you along and say I am or I'm not. I am very interested in it, I like it, and my then next obvious question is do you have another, something similar in the work?

Speaker 2:

well, I'm working on another book. It's. It is not similar. Now, my, my first book that I wrote 30 years ago and self-published, is still available, but it is not. It is similar in a way because the that book was called paradigms. It is called paradigms. It is called Paradigms Lost Paradigms.

Speaker 1:

Lost. Oh hey, for those on the behind-the-scenes video viewers, they can see that. Uh-oh, I think you froze there for a second, so let me Millennium. Yeah, okay, okay, okay.

Speaker 2:

And the other reason I don't like to say I'm going to read other people's stuff is because I personally worry about anything subconsciously creeping into my own works if I'm reading a bunch of other people's stuff. You know what I mean. So you have a fear of other people's stuff. You know what I mean, so you have a fear of other people's opinions, oh, no, other people's ideas, boy, has that come out wrong?

Speaker 1:

No, Agree or disagree with someone else's stuff, it might accidentally get buried in a part of my brain. I don't want to subconsciously accidentally lift plagiarize, if you must, somebody else's work because I didn't overtly recall I read it in your book and I'm typing it out as if thinking it was my great idea. Does that make it clearer?

Speaker 2:

I see? Well, I'm not at all. I'm not yeah, that's a little clearer. I'm not at all, because for me, anything I've ever written, no matter how original it may seem when you dig down there, it's derivative. You know, we all, we're all victims of what we've been bringing in conditioning from our parents and our teachers and so forth. So you're bound to be affected by whatever you take in. But that's okay. That's okay because you take, you mix it up and you present it in a brand new kind of way and hopefully you've got something original to say. Maybe, maybe not, but if you say it in a in a way, that's, you know, people need to hear the same thing over and over and over again, but they, they need to hear it in different ways.

Speaker 1:

Slightly different ways to make it stick. Yeah, In politics, having run for office myself. Right, it's the touch seven times.

Speaker 2:

You've been in office.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, A couple of times. God bless you. Well, I put my money where my mouth is, unlike a whole lot of other people that don't right. Touch people seven times in seven slightly different ways A mailer, a TV ad, a radio ad saying slightly different ways of the same thing as you're saying. So that your presence is enough then that it sticks. That's kind of what you're saying. The repetition matters yeah, yeah do you have a website people could visit?

Speaker 2:

Yes, it is GershonSiegelcom.

Speaker 1:

Simple enough. I wrote it down to make sure when I edit the episode I'll put it on the screen for all to see. Looking on the few that bother to view the behind the scenes videos. Most people listen across the 25 plus audio platforms this show airs on, including spotify and iheart and all that. So thank, I didn't say your name enough. Normally I like to repeat the name again. That touched seven times to get it to stick. Thank you, Gershon, spelled G-E-R-S-H-O-N, Siegel and again GershonSiegelcom. If you can't remember it, or whatever, come back and look at the video. It'll be on the display. Thank you for joining me today. Take care, God bless.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for having me, Joseph. That was very sweet of you to extend an invitation. I'm very grateful.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for having tuned in for Chris D'Attusio's Politics Show. If you haven't already, please check out my primary internationally available book, terror Strikes, coming soon to a city near you, available anywhere books are sold. If you have locally run bookstores still near you, they can order it for you. And let me remind, over time the fancy high production items will come. But for now, for starters, it's just you as a very appreciated listener by me. All subjects, no flaws, just straight to key discussion points. A show that looks at a variety of topics, mostly politics, through a Christian, us constitutionalist lens. So again, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Take care, god bless, like and subscribe to Constitutionalist Politics Podcast and share episodes. We need your help.

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